Bioshock Infinite (End Game Spoilers Starting Page 17)

I'm at the endgame and I've really had to struggle to finish the last couple hours. It's interesting to read how most 'real' players and not game journalists are reacting to the game. It seems almost impossible to find an objective review of this game from the games press. But here and on NeoGaf some people have a lot of fair criticisms that were simply ignored in reviews. The art direction/setting/narrative all go places that few games do and that is refreshing but the gameplay itself is just tired. Yet the industry has decided every game should just be about shooting.

To be fair I saw a lot of potential with the rail riding and hooks that was just only touched on and I really wish they took it further. It would have been cool to have to take out an entire island or something by riding the rail and making well timed RPG blasts to some cores. The rails should have been as much a core element to combat as cover was to Gears of War. I've just become completely impatient with the combat and can't wait to be done with this. I already turned the difficulty down from hard just because it's that tiresome.

I will also freely admit that there's one or two little details I still don't get?

Spoiler: show

2. So Booker/Comstock are just alternate universe versions of each other based whether Booker chose to be baptized/saved at Wounded Knee? Is it that simple?

Spoiler: show

It has to be more than that. It was made very clear that Comstock was a coward who claimed others glory as his own, while Booker it was made clear was a killing machine who had served and was a worthy warrior

Ultracon wrote:

Rest in spoilers - and really, people probably should finish the game before they talk about lazy storytelling.

Spoiler: show

How the hell is a story with a deep discussion about several social ideologies, quantum mechanics, and human motivation lazy!!!

Spoiler: show

When I looked at the predictable I was looking at the game as one that went through a dev cycle where a Romney win would make it more edgy due to to obvious Mormon story/Mormons are bad. Low hanging fruit.Bumping into Rosencrantz and Guildenstern early on in their "Hey we are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!!!" T shirts... I was amused but that was lazy. Now if you have not seen the movie this would leave them room to be really cool; if you have seen the movie then you are just seeing it again. Also using a lot of things from our history to make a world doesn't make it new and amazing, it makes it educational or expected/accurate/predictable for the time and enviro, this was nicely done but was not amazing. JMS had great success recycling history in B5 and did it well.

I am somewhat tempted to start using a controller just so I can melee a little more easily, though. Too bad shooting would then suck.

Shooting's not too bad tbh. It has aim assist and it's the kind that snaps to a target if you're close when you aim down sights, so I'm able to quickly change from target to target.

Aim assist is a big part of why some consider controller shooting to suck in the first place.

I'm at the point where you first get the Shock Jockey vigor, and to my own surprise my feelings about the game are thoroughly lukewarm. A lot of the specific little nitpicks have already been mentioned by others. Bammer's description of Elizabeth's character design as "jarring" is an accurate description to me, too. I was also rolling my eyes at just how quickly she becomes your trusting sidekick. Generally, something just feels 'off' to me about it all, and I'm having trouble really buying into the plot contrivances and many of the smaller leaps like the fluff that reconciles the gameplay design of the vigors with their purpose in the setting.

I almost wonder if this all wouldn't have worked better as something other than a first-person shooter. I recall having similar thoughts at points in Bioshock but here its been pervasive since almost the beginning. For now I'm trying to keep myself from forming strong opinions about it until I complete a playthrough but I'm a bit surprised at my own initial reception to the game.

One really frustrating niggle that thoroughly ticks me off is that the audio logs are not subtitled. And Elizabeth always seems to wait to say something until I start listening to one, causing it to mute so I can hear her ask what'll happen if they find us for the umpteenth time. Then I replay the log and the bravado and overacting put me off yet again..

For me, what allowed me to accept Elizabeth quickly was some self induced suspension of disbelief. The whole thing felt "rigged" from the start...that Booker was a pawn in someone's plan...and they were blatantly open about this from the start.

Elizabeth is invincible too, she never gets hurt in the crossfire between you and the various enemies you face. The rail mechanic feels very "real" too. I just accepted the far out aspect of the game along with the iffy science of huge floating islands held aloft by hot air balloons (well it is explained later that it's not just hot air balloons).

It's interesting to read how most 'real' players and not game journalists are reacting to the game. It seems almost impossible to find an objective review of this game from the games press. But here and on NeoGaf some people have a lot of fair criticisms that were simply ignored in reviews. The art direction/setting/narrative all go places that few games do and that is refreshing but the gameplay itself is just tired. Yet the industry has decided every game should just be about shooting.

I am finding it interesting watching opinion swing on this game (as they always do for mega-hyped games). The predictable sites were ga-ga in their write-ups, but I stumbled across the review on Rock Paper Shotgun on Monday. It raised enough red flags that I put off purchase until I had time to play. So far, I'm not regretting that move. It's pretty clear that the storytelling is amazingly well done, but I think some design choices would annoy me. At a sale price later on, I don't think I'll mind as much.

Why is there a secret, KKK-like society worshiping Booth and demonizing Lincoln if racism is openly accepted in Columbia? Why not do it out in the open? Why not make Booth a semi-deity like Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson and worship him in public?

I assumed that was just referencing the KKK/ Free Masons/Knights of Columbus/ all-those-other-nerdy-unnecessarily-secretive-orders.

Beat it last night. The ending was good, even though I figured out the story before the big reveals. Definitely high on the chart of video game narratives.

I expect this game to become a bit of a classic. Not because of the gameplay. The gameplay was just more generic shooter shlock, though I can see other games copying the "Elizabeth as your Battle Fairy" mechanic. But the narrative delivered very effectively.

My biggest complaint would be Elizabeth's jarring character design. Her appearance didn't match her voice. It didn't match her informed age. It didn't match all the other characters in the game. She looked like what you'd get if the art director or someone at the top of the dev team had a fetish and was directing the character modeler to make her look a way the character modeler didn't want to make her look.

My one other complaint is:

Spoiler: show

The whole Fitzroy/Vox element of the story made very little sense. She was a slave in white-power-topia framed for murder who then lead an uprising. Why the fuck do the two protagonists start declaring what a bad person she is simply because she's killing her slave masters? Fuck off, protagonists. The slaves don't owe the people lining up to throw baseballs at them a peaceful resolution.

And then the Vox declares war on their own hero martyr because his state of living "complicates the narrative." That narrative worked out just fine for Jesus, but even if we accept that Fitzroy wants you dead to inspire the Vox, what about the fucking Vox she's sending to kill you? We're to take it that these hundreds of soldiers are trying to kill you so that... they stay inspired by you? That was all just kind of lame.

Spoiler: show

I kind of agree with you about Fitzroy, right up until the point she wanted to kill the child. I think Elizabeth and DeWitt may jump to their conclusion a little too soon, but ultimately they're correct: she's just as bad as anyone she might denounce.

Plus of course, it lets them say "the only difference between Fitzroy and Comstock is the spelling" which rather sets up the ending, where the only actual difference between DeWitt and Comstock is the spelling.

Vox attacking DeWitt made no real sense, except, I suppose, to underscore that she was power-crazed and evil. And, yes, if DeWitt being alive "complicates" things then why the fuck would you send a ton of rank and file soldiers to kill DeWitt and hence notice that he's not dead?

Spoiler: show

I kind of wonder if they cut some Fitzroy scenes. I got that they wanted to make a French Revolution/ "Animal Farm" type narrative where the Pigs are no better than the Farmers. But Fitzroy never fit the bill. Killing that kid certainly makes her immoral, but I still find it to be the sympathetic immorality of the abused and angry. It doesn't raise her to the level of Comstock or the other guy at all. If they had established that she wanted put herself up in Comstocks office and send the Vox back to their 16 hour workdays to make money for her, it would have been a more coherent story.

But instead it just came off like "hey we have this Run Lola Run type story about a dude in a flying city, oh and hey we modeled all these combatants somebody think of a reason to fight them." And then they just kind of phoned that in. It makes me wonder if they had a different writer responsible for that storyline and they were more of the oldschool game story writer that didn't really "get it."

One really frustrating niggle that thoroughly ticks me off is that the audio logs are not subtitled. And Elizabeth always seems to wait to say something until I start listening to one, causing it to mute so I can hear her ask what'll happen if they find us for the umpteenth time. Then I replay the log and the bravado and overacting put me off yet again..

hit O to open game menu, one of the buttons has transcripts of all the audio logs you've found.

Beat it last night. The ending was good, even though I figured out the story before the big reveals. Definitely high on the chart of video game narratives.

I expect this game to become a bit of a classic. Not because of the gameplay. The gameplay was just more generic shooter shlock, though I can see other games copying the "Elizabeth as your Battle Fairy" mechanic. But the narrative delivered very effectively.

My biggest complaint would be Elizabeth's jarring character design. Her appearance didn't match her voice. It didn't match her informed age. It didn't match all the other characters in the game. She looked like what you'd get if the art director or someone at the top of the dev team had a fetish and was directing the character modeler to make her look a way the character modeler didn't want to make her look.

My one other complaint is:

Spoiler: show

The whole Fitzroy/Vox element of the story made very little sense. She was a slave in white-power-topia framed for murder who then lead an uprising. Why the fuck do the two protagonists start declaring what a bad person she is simply because she's killing her slave masters? Fuck off, protagonists. The slaves don't owe the people lining up to throw baseballs at them a peaceful resolution.

And then the Vox declares war on their own hero martyr because his state of living "complicates the narrative." That narrative worked out just fine for Jesus, but even if we accept that Fitzroy wants you dead to inspire the Vox, what about the fucking Vox she's sending to kill you? We're to take it that these hundreds of soldiers are trying to kill you so that... they stay inspired by you? That was all just kind of lame.

Spoiler: show

I kind of agree with you about Fitzroy, right up until the point she wanted to kill the child. I think Elizabeth and DeWitt may jump to their conclusion a little too soon, but ultimately they're correct: she's just as bad as anyone she might denounce.

Plus of course, it lets them say "the only difference between Fitzroy and Comstock is the spelling" which rather sets up the ending, where the only actual difference between DeWitt and Comstock is the spelling.

Vox attacking DeWitt made no real sense, except, I suppose, to underscore that she was power-crazed and evil. And, yes, if DeWitt being alive "complicates" things then why the fuck would you send a ton of rank and file soldiers to kill DeWitt and hence notice that he's not dead?

Spoiler: show

I kind of wonder if they cut some Fitzroy scenes. I got that they wanted to make a French Revolution/ "Animal Farm" type narrative where the Pigs are no better than the Farmers. But Fitzroy never fit the bill. Killing that kid certainly makes her immoral, but I still find it to be the sympathetic immorality of the abused and angry. It doesn't raise her to the level of Comstock or the other guy at all. If they had established that she wanted put herself up in Comstocks office and send the Vox back to their 16 hour workdays to make money for her, it would have been a more coherent story.

But instead it just came off like "hey we have this 12 Monkeys type story about a dude in a flying city, oh and hey we modeled all these combatants somebody think of a reason to fight them." And then they just kind of phoned that in. It makes me wonder if they had a different writer responsible for that storyline and they were more of the oldschool game story writer that didn't really "get it."

Beat it last night. The ending was good, even though I figured out the story before the big reveals. Definitely high on the chart of video game narratives.

I expect this game to become a bit of a classic. Not because of the gameplay. The gameplay was just more generic shooter shlock, though I can see other games copying the "Elizabeth as your Battle Fairy" mechanic. But the narrative delivered very effectively.

My biggest complaint would be Elizabeth's jarring character design. Her appearance didn't match her voice. It didn't match her informed age. It didn't match all the other characters in the game. She looked like what you'd get if the art director or someone at the top of the dev team had a fetish and was directing the character modeler to make her look a way the character modeler didn't want to make her look.

My one other complaint is:

Spoiler: show

The whole Fitzroy/Vox element of the story made very little sense. She was a slave in white-power-topia framed for murder who then lead an uprising. Why the fuck do the two protagonists start declaring what a bad person she is simply because she's killing her slave masters? Fuck off, protagonists. The slaves don't owe the people lining up to throw baseballs at them a peaceful resolution.

And then the Vox declares war on their own hero martyr because his state of living "complicates the narrative." That narrative worked out just fine for Jesus, but even if we accept that Fitzroy wants you dead to inspire the Vox, what about the fucking Vox she's sending to kill you? We're to take it that these hundreds of soldiers are trying to kill you so that... they stay inspired by you? That was all just kind of lame.

Spoiler: show

I kind of agree with you about Fitzroy, right up until the point she wanted to kill the child. I think Elizabeth and DeWitt may jump to their conclusion a little too soon, but ultimately they're correct: she's just as bad as anyone she might denounce.

Plus of course, it lets them say "the only difference between Fitzroy and Comstock is the spelling" which rather sets up the ending, where the only actual difference between DeWitt and Comstock is the spelling.

Vox attacking DeWitt made no real sense, except, I suppose, to underscore that she was power-crazed and evil. And, yes, if DeWitt being alive "complicates" things then why the fuck would you send a ton of rank and file soldiers to kill DeWitt and hence notice that he's not dead?

Spoiler: show

I kind of wonder if they cut some Fitzroy scenes. I got that they wanted to make a French Revolution/ "Animal Farm" type narrative where the Pigs are no better than the Farmers. But Fitzroy never fit the bill. Killing that kid certainly makes her immoral, but I still find it to be the sympathetic immorality of the abused and angry. It doesn't raise her to the level of Comstock or the other guy at all. If they had established that she wanted put herself up in Comstocks office and send the Vox back to their 16 hour workdays to make money for her, it would have been a more coherent story.

But instead it just came off like "hey we have this 12 Monkeys type story about a dude in a flying city, oh and hey we modeled all these combatants somebody think of a reason to fight them." And then they just kind of phoned that in. It makes me wonder if they had a different writer responsible for that storyline and they were more of the oldschool game story writer that didn't really "get it."

There's a prequel/novella about Fitzroy that's available on Kindle. She gets captured and interrogated by this doctor who's trying to figure out why these Negroes are gettin uppity. Gives you some back story on her. She's extremely intelligent, calculating, and ruthless. She never denies killing Lady Comstock, but indicates that she respected her quite a lot. In the end, you see her cold ruthless side.

And then the Vox declares war on their own hero martyr because his state of living "complicates the narrative." That narrative worked out just fine for Jesus, but even if we accept that Fitzroy wants you dead to inspire the Vox, what about the fucking Vox she's sending to kill you? We're to take it that these hundreds of soldiers are trying to kill you so that... they stay inspired by you? That was all just kind of lame.

Spoiler: show

That's a good point. I felt that was jarring. They should have modified the story that some Vox realize Booker is alive and join under his banner, while Booker has no interest in it. Elizabeth reluctantly reminds him people can be used to serve their current purpose of getting the airship back. Fitzy sends her own elite troops to combat your Vox supporters, because they are true believers who want you to stay dead for the cause.

The story could be reminiscent of great causes that die due to infighting.

And then the Vox declares war on their own hero martyr because his state of living "complicates the narrative." That narrative worked out just fine for Jesus, but even if we accept that Fitzroy wants you dead to inspire the Vox, what about the fucking Vox she's sending to kill you? We're to take it that these hundreds of soldiers are trying to kill you so that... they stay inspired by you? That was all just kind of lame.

Spoiler: show

That's a good point. I felt that was jarring. They should have modified the story that some Vox realize Booker is alive and join under his banner, while Booker has no interest in it. Elizabeth reluctantly reminds him people can be used to serve their current purpose of getting the airship back. Fitzy sends her own elite troops to combat your Vox supporters, because they are true believers who want you to stay dead for the cause.

The story could be reminiscent of great causes that die due to infighting.

Spoiler: show

Look at this from the perspective of a rank-and-file Vox. Your dead hero is suddenly alive. It may not even be a dude you've actually met before, and have only seen on propaganda posters. Meanwhile, your current leader tells you that guy is an asshole impostor. Which are you going to believe?

The fact that people just accepted who you were, even a little bit, when you show up is far less believable than them turning on you.

Kiru, I am also 43, and am blown away at the look and feel of this game. I think back to playing Asteroids on my Atari and wonder how my brain would have exploded to just watch the opening cinematic first 20 minutes of this game in 1980.

Quote:

puddle water drop ring animations on the SHOULDERS of the person rowing the boat you're in

ZOMG, GAME BREAKER!!!!!!!!!!!

Not sure if it's directed at me, and not sure why you're getting snarky about my honest opinion... but I don't know where you see that I said that I didn't like the art direction, look/feel, or where I said that I thought the story was crap; I was talking about how I was expecting more "polish" to go into the game. When you've read reviews that make the game sound like the end all, be all of modern gaming, I was a bit put off that my first intro to the game (the boat scene) had totally out of place effects. Things picked up from there, yes, but...

I think you have to be pretty cynical to not enjoy a game of this caliber. Finally, a polished game is released, and you can tell how much care has gone into every little nook and cranny, and yet some folks still aren't happy.

Well, let's see... this is the first game I've ever had to deal with a sound issue that actually hurt my ears (constant crackling that grows in volume until it made me yank my headphones off), so that's not too polished. Also, my experience with frame rate stuttering is an issue lots of folks are dealing with, and the game does not have incredibly high-resolution textures, since they're illustrations. Crysis 1, 2 & 3 ran flawlessly on my system (Yes, totally different art styles). So, again, not so polished. I'm not saying I'm unhappy with the game, I like the game... and all PC games have some bugs we have to deal with to a certain extent. I'm just saying that it's not up to the level I was lead to believe. For example, I felt that Dishonored used the same engine and did a better job of it, as far as an illustrative approach to it's design.

I would love to know what game has come out in the past year that exceeds the esthetics, storyline, and gameplay of Bioshock Infinite? Most games wouldn't rate higher in any ONE of those three key areas, let alone all three. If there is a new game out that beats it in all three, please name it, and I will pick it up today -

Again, not sure where you got that I thought the game was crap. I like the story, I like the design, I like the gunplay, but I'm not blown away by it.

I love the gameplay - I like how you can customize your character to handle firefights in creative ways - I am just going thru this first time with mainly the handcannon and the shock vigor, but sometimes I will just mess around in a certain firefight with different loadouts and handle a fight in a totally different way -

I love the gameplay - I like how you can customize your character to handle firefights in creative ways - I am just going thru this first time with mainly the handcannon and the shock vigor, but sometimes I will just mess around in a certain firefight with different loadouts and handle a fight in a totally different way -

Out of curiosity, have you played BioShock 1?

several times - and Infinite blows it away. that game was boring after the big reveal halfway thru.

whereas, Infinite holds your attention to the very end -

Spoiler: show

hell i even watched the entire credits and got even a few more precious seconds of playtime!

I love the gameplay - I like how you can customize your character to handle firefights in creative ways - I am just going thru this first time with mainly the handcannon and the shock vigor, but sometimes I will just mess around in a certain firefight with different loadouts and handle a fight in a totally different way -

Out of curiosity, have you played BioShock 1?

several times - and Infinite blows it away.

I'm finding it to be a bit of the opposite. I've been a little bored by the similarities in Infinite so far (I'm just done with Battleship Bay), so I'm hoping that it'll be the anti-BIo1 and I'll hit my magic zone after some "big reveal" (I'm staying spoiler-free).

I love the gameplay - I like how you can customize your character to handle firefights in creative ways - I am just going thru this first time with mainly the handcannon and the shock vigor, but sometimes I will just mess around in a certain firefight with different loadouts and handle a fight in a totally different way -

Out of curiosity, have you played BioShock 1?

several times - and Infinite blows it away.

I'm finding it to be a bit of the opposite. I've been a little bored by the similarities in Infinite so far (I'm just done with Battleship Bay), so I'm hoping that it'll be the anti-BIo1 and I'll hit my magic zone after some "big reveal" (I'm staying spoiler-free).

well, things change up a bit after Battleship Bay -- there are more varied locations and enemies for instance that appear soon -- Bioshock got boring to me halfway thru as the locations and enemies were pretty similar throughout the entire game.

yes, the weaponry and vigors are very similar to Bioshock I, which is why this is named Bioshock as well - but look at all the improvements:

oops came in and edited and spoilered the next paragraph where i explain why the combat is heads-and-shoulders better than Bioshock I after realizing some of these combat improvements may not show up til halfway in the game (which is why it is so hard to have conversations about this game!!!! )

Spoiler: show

but the improved enemy AI ("flush him out" and flanking for instance), the more varied combat settings, THE SKYLINES, the ability to use Tears (press F to get a hook or cover) and even just having Elizabeth beside you tossing you stuff, is IMHO an advance from Bioshock I. and I am sure I forgot some...

I mean, is that not all an advance from Bioshock I?????

edit: maybe it is time for a Bioshock Infinite thread that is loaded with unspoilered spoilers???

and the game does not have incredibly high-resolution textures, since they're illustrations.

/agreed

Christ, you two are really going to bust my balls over a sentence in which I didn't articulate my point as clearly as I'd perhaps should have?

I do print and illustration for a living. I have no clue when it comes to 3D game design, or how the artists get a texture from Pshop to UE3. What I meant to say is that a wood plank in this game is less of a "dense" texture in terms of pixels info than, say, a photographic wood plank from a game like Crysis.

Let's say that a wood boardwalk plank in BSI was created PShop; basic art, simple gradients and solid colors at a given size at 300dpi, so it's a fairly small file size once exported for UE3 to use. If I take a high-res photo of a wood plank, and open it in PShop, make it the same size at 300dpi, it's going to be a larger file size, since the rasterizing process has to deal with more pixel data, since there are so many more variations in color and shading in a real wood plank than a drawn wood plank that uses solid colors. If all of the textures were painted in Pshop, they would've been optimized as much as possible... this game was designed for consoles first, right?

So, my point for that SINGLE fooking sentence was that I can't understand why the game chugs in some areas that appear fairly simple, when I can play games that have photo-realistic textures without my rig breaking a sweat.

That's all. What's wrong with asking that?

What's wrong with hoping that the devs would've shipped an optimized as possible product? What's wrong with having an opinion about... a GAME?

So "would you kindly" take your mitts of my nuts? I'm going back to play the game. Sheesh.

B:I doesn't seem to chug on my rig (GTX670) unless it's at a point where it appears to be streaming information from the disc. I get a solid 60FPS during every other moment in the game. That's the point where the console design shows through the most since UE3 (though I don't know how much control developers have over this) is primarily tuned for consoles and their current 512MB RAM limitation. If it were able to precache prior to entering a new area we probably wouldn't see those moments of temporary stuttering.

It's not even particularly unique to B:I. All UE3 games seem to have this problem. Most mask it by starting the streaming with the lower resolution mipmaps and let you see the texture pop-in as they stream up the higher resolution texture. I haven't seen any (obvious) cases of texture pop-in in B:I and considering I haven't had any streaming stutters during combat I'm happy to have the stutter over the pop-in.

well, things change up a bit after Battleship Bay -- there are more varied locations and enemies for instance that appear soon -- Bioshock got boring to me halfway thru as the locations and enemies were pretty similar throughout the entire game.

the plot also gets far more interesting. I haven't beaten it yet but I think I'm almost done (based on achievements), and it just keeps getting weirder and bringing up more questions instead of doing a "big reveal".

You've got Belle from Beauty and the Beast following you around making cutesy little observations about everything and being adorably naieve everywhere you go. I keep expecting her to break out in a musical. I do not doubt she'll sing a song about something before the game ends.

Spoiler: show

When she does it's driven by the player and it's one of the more touching moments in the game.

Agreed, and until I reached the end I personally thought it was the best part of the game.

BTW, when it comes to characterizations and storytelling, you can do a heck of a lot worse than Disney, especially when you look at the movies made back when Walt was still around. That being said, I agree that the art style of Elizabeth didn’t quite mesh with the other characters in the world.

But still, what a game. Wow.

I didn’t realize it until I finished that have been exactly two games where the writing was good enough that at key points I almost refused to continue along the path it laid out. One was Bioshock 1’s “Would you kindly...” sequence, the other was Bioshock Infinite’s...

Spoiler: show

forcing you to hand over baby Anna.

In both cases, the writing made me sufficiently emotionally invested that I was >this< close to turning off the computer and walking away. Better that than being an unwilling participant in an action I hated to carry out.

0451 was a code first used to unlock a vault in the game Deus Ex, published by Eidos Montreal. Since then, this code has showed up multiple times in a number of video games, including Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It is a reference to the book Fahrenheit 451. The code for the first door in System Shock was 451, a System Shock 2 door had 45100 as a code, and Bioshock had a room that required the code 0451 to enter. This number is now recognized by many Deus Ex fans. The art director of Eidos Montreal even tweeted to his followers that one of his flight numbers was 0451, and stated that Deus Ex fans would know what that meant.

Look at this from the perspective of a rank-and-file Vox. Your dead hero is suddenly alive. It may not even be a dude you've actually met before, and have only seen on propaganda posters. Meanwhile, your current leader tells you that guy is an asshole impostor. Which are you going to believe?

The fact that people just accepted who you were, even a little bit, when you show up is far less believable than them turning on you.

Spoiler: show

I thought Booker was front and center so that people would recognize him. Just seemed weird to see Vox allies immediately turn on you, since just a while ago they were friendlies.

Quote:

In both cases, the writing made me sufficiently emotionally invested that I was >this< close to turning off the computer and walking away. Better that than being an unwilling participant in an action I hated to carry out.

Well, almost. Ultimately I had to see what happened next.

Agreed. When I make fun of "writing" like in Halo or Call of Duty, I usually see the cynical gamer respond that there's nothing better and we should just get used to it. Actually, no. Bioshock and Infinite show it's completely possible to see intelligent writing in a AAA game. And once you see it, it's hard to go back to Shootey McShooter the 3rd. In fact, I don't. Why bother?

Anyone else having problems with the sound? I played about 3 hours last and to start with, everything was fine. After a while the sound kept becoming all garbled and fuzzy to the extent where I couldn't hear what characters were saying. After a few minutes of being like this, it returned to normal for a while, till it started again a few minutes later. It seems to be becoming more and more frequent the more I play.

Anyone else having problems with the sound? I played about 3 hours last and to start with, everything was fine. After a while the sound kept becoming all garbled and fuzzy to the extent where I couldn't hear what characters were saying. After a few minutes of being like this, it returned to normal for a while, till it started again a few minutes later. It seems to be becoming more and more frequent the more I play.

I've heard of other people experiencing that, but I hadn't. What I got (and it scared me a few times) seemed to coincide with the hitches when there was heavy texture streaming (or some other background loading). For some reason that would generate the sound of throwing the fire vigor (broken glass followed by sounds of flames). By the end of the game I got used to hearing it repeatedly. Especially amusing to me since I basically never used that vigor.

I just finished my second play through of the game, played on 1999 mode and trying (and succeeding) to get the Scavenger Hunt achievement. Frak that was hard! So easy to die, and it costs money to come back. If you run out of money, you're done, so I skipped buying many upgrades in favor of making sure I couldn't run out of money, even if I died a lot in the tougher battles. Still, made it through, and won't need to play on that mode again. Whew!

I'm a 0.1%er!

Still missing 1 voice recording and 3 kinetiscopes or telescopes for those achievements, though, and I have no idea where they could be. Guess I'll probably break down and use a guide when I go for them.

Such an excellent game. I'll be looking forward to seeing what they do with DLC. I wonder how they are going to handle it... Stuff integrated into and extending the game? Or stuff somehow separate from the main game story? Time will tell.

Anyone else having problems with the sound? I played about 3 hours last and to start with, everything was fine. After a while the sound kept becoming all garbled and fuzzy to the extent where I couldn't hear what characters were saying. After a few minutes of being like this, it returned to normal for a while, till it started again a few minutes later. It seems to be becoming more and more frequent the more I play.

I've heard of other people experiencing that, but I hadn't. What I got (and it scared me a few times) seemed to coincide with the hitches when there was heavy texture streaming (or some other background loading). For some reason that would generate the sound of throwing the fire vigor (broken glass followed by sounds of flames). By the end of the game I got used to hearing it repeatedly. Especially amusing to me since I basically never used that vigor.

It turns out I was asking my poor laptop to do too much. Lowerd some of the graphical settings a bit and the sound stuttering has gone. The fps never noticeably lowerd when the sound went weird so I thought it may be something else.

It's hard being a pc gamer with only a fairly cheap laptop to game on, my gaming pc died last year after 6 years of service with only moderate upgrades every so often. Looking forward to the summer when I plan to get another one built.

As for Bioshock, after 3 hours, all I can say is: 'wow, this is great!' Don't think I'm very far in because I want to explore every inch of the game world. I'm on call with work all weekend and I'm desperately hoping I don't get called out as that would waste valuable game time.

B:I doesn't seem to chug on my rig (GTX670) unless it's at a point where it appears to be streaming information from the disc.

My system is all-SSD. I still get framerates in the 20's when I look at a DOOR. Turn around and look at the open space behind me? No slowdown.

My system can't get much better. Separate 120GB SSD for boot/OS, 4x512GB Crucial M4 SSDs in a spanned dynamic disk, an i7 3770K, 16GB of RAM, and SLI GTX Titan, and I'm only running at 1080p. There's something wrong with the game itself, but since it's just looking at walls/doors that does it I'm not that concerned.